


Till Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown

by Tammany



Series: Mycroft's Vulnerable [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Demi-erotica, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, M/M, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:24:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaaaaand...</p><p>Mycroft insisted we complete the arc started with "Boundaries of Touch " and contiuing with "Under the Shadow." Please, be warned--on the one hand this is definitely erotica. For a radical change, sex will actually be depicted. On the other hand, it's not all that stunningly graphic. If you know how it all fits together you won't have many serious questions, but you also won't get the "detailed synopsis" thing. I don't know. It just never turns into graphic erotica with me.</p><p>If you really had to classify it? It's friendship/love with a small serving of soft-core on the side. Even more, it's Mycroft doing the unheard of, and letting the walls fall down. But there is that little serving of soft-core. If that squicks you, consider yourself warned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Till Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown

 

Mycroft woke up trapped between two polar extremes—the need to find a lavatory, and the need to remain exactly as he was, where he was, feeling exactly as he felt. Sometime during the night he and Lestrade appeared to have rearranged themselves just enough to result in a careless, comfortable heap on the sofa, half sprawled, half sitting, but entirely at ease. Mycroft’s face was pressed into the curve of Lestrade’s neck; his arms wrapped around the other man, one over his chest, the other tucked under the arched curve of the small of his back, hand wrapping up over the point of his hip. One of Lestrade’s arms lay flopped on the sofa, but the other curled over Mycroft’s shoulders, his fist clutching the cotton of Mycroft’s shirt. Their bodies pressed together; Mycroft’s upper leg hitched up, trapping Lestrade’s thighs beneath his own.

He kept his eyes shut, refusing to permit the demands of the day to take him from this. He couldn’t recall a time over the past two decades and more that he’d ever been so easy and so intimate with anyone, ever.

Of course, he’d structured his life to ensure he wouldn’t. At this exact moment he could hardly recall why.

His bladder was in a desperate way. Mycroft seemed to recall a large amount of tea being internalized sometime the previous evening. No doubt it wanted to be externalized now. But if he got up, the night would be over, the day would start, the thoughts would take over. As long as he stayed where he was, he could hold them at bay.

He could feel the night’s stubble scratch against Lestrade’s knit hoodie. It was such a simple, homely detail. No one had seen him in stubble for years, unless you counted Anthea darting in to bring him a fresh razor during trips overseas. His stubble had been a private thing he could treat as a fiction: the real Mycroft Holmes was eternally close-shaven. His hair, thinning and receding though it might be, was always neat—not flopping over his forehead, tickling the bridge of his nose as it now was. Even lovers, such as they were, saw only Mycroft as he chose to be seen, and as little of that as he could manage and still technically engage in sex at all.

Now, though, he was all too human, shielded only by the grace of an arm thrown over his shoulders and another man’s kindness. In seconds he’d have to rise and retreat from that. For just a few more seconds, though, he could keep his eyes shut and trust it.

Above him, Lestrade whispered, “Look. I’ll go piss-and come back. Then you piss, and come back. It’s easy. No need to stop. Just…pause. And start again.”

It wasn’t that easy. Once he admitted he was really awake, he’d have to start being Mycroft again. Too much depended on it.

“Try it my way, you muggins.” Lestrade dragged the fleece blanket up from where it had fallen over their thighs, and wrapped it around Mycroft’s shoulders. “Back in a mo’. Don’t dare get up—hear me?”

Mycroft murmured, reluctantly, as Lestrade rose. He considered the sounds as they came—most improper to even think about the crashing cascade sounding from behind the lavatory door, but it was, somehow, another intimacy in a morning that was all intimacy. The toilet flushed; water ran. There was the faint scrubbing sound of a toothbrush coming into play—and then a sound of rummaging. When Lestrade came out, he smelled faintly of peppermint toothpaste. “I found a spare toothbrush, if you want it,” he said. “It’s on the front edge of the sink.” He eased down beside Mycroft, and brushed his jaw against Mycroft’s head. Mycroft was foolishly pleased to feel the stubble catch and know Lestrade hadn’t shaved. Perhaps the night could continue after all, even though the sun was well up and the day had definitely arrived.

He slipped from under the blanket, handing it to Lestrade. The other man smiled up at him. Mycroft had never let himself really consider Lestrade’s eyes, before, beyond noting they were a very fine brown, and attractive. Now he noted that they were well-opened, set at a slight angle that made them appear merry, smiling, even when he was just watching. Beautiful eyes, made for laughing. Before he’d considered, one finger had reached out and stroked along the outer corner of one eye, making Lestrade blink.

“Lovely,” he said, then slipped away to relieve himself.

His trousers, he noted, were crushed and wrinkled—the center crease still there, but softened and muted, with a crazy network of lesser wrinkles crushed into the silk and wool blend. His shirt was beyond crushed. He looked into the mirror, and an old man seemed to stare back out at him, disheveled and drawn. He moistened his hands, preparing to finger-comb his hair and try to neaten himself, thinking to go hunting a razor to scrape away the ginger and grey stubble. Then he considered his relief that Lestrade hadn’t shaved, and left it, stopping only long enough to use the toothbrush left for him.

Lestrade was stretched in a lazy sprawl on the sofa, the blue and rust fleece blanket with the most peculiar stag draped over him. As Mycroft came back in he flipped the edge up, and made a space at his side, one arm offering the chance to return to their former closeness. Mycroft hesitated.

“I don’t do this,” he said, softly. “I never do this.”

“Yeah?” Lestrade didn’t move, just left the offer open—a place at his side, an arm to go around Mycroft’s shoulders, a blanket to cover them both.

Mycroft terrified himself by slipping silently into the space offered and leaning against his friend. Lestrade’s arm wrapped around him and drew him close. A quick flick of a wrist tossed the edge of the blanket back over them. Mycroft slid his arms around Lestrade, pushed his face into the turn of his shoulder, shivered as Lestrade nuzzled his hairline.

“Going bald,” he said, forlornly.

“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Lestrade murmured, and kissed along the deep bay where hair met forehead.

Mycroft held him tight—then tighter still.

“I’m triggering,” he said, admitting what he couldn’t say outright the night before. “Bits of flashback. Overlap. Andrew on the ground. Magnussen on the ground. Blood in the shadows. Sherlock in the lights. All I could see him as that night—I triggered. Imagined him the way he was when he was twelve.” Tears threatened. “I can’t make it stop.”

“Yeah? So? Maybe you’re not supposed to.”

Of course he was supposed to. If he couldn’t drive it away, hold it at bay, he couldn’t do what Mycroft Holmes had to do.

But if he didn’t give way, he still couldn’t.

He felt so helpless in the face of it all. Sherlock’s mad, erratic starts—his drugs, his quixotic quests, his dragon slaying, his rage against everything Mycroft ever tried to do with him or for him. Helpless in the face of the demands that never stopped; helpless in the face of the triggering that seemed to have taken complete control of him the evening before. He couldn’t trust himself, and for most of his life he’d had no one else he could trust. Not even as a child, when Mummy and Father had been well-intentioned but never useful—and often so clumsy they left emotional bruises and wounds Mycroft didn’t know how to manage except by retreating and putting up walls. One of his earliest revelations about the world: people hurt you, whether they meant to or not.

This morning Mycroft hurt—but it wasn’t Lestrade hurting him.

“Hold me,” he said, even though Lestrade held him close already. A second arm eased up and sheltered him, a hand cradled his back.

“This good?”

Mycroft nodded silently, first fighting down tears, then resigning himself to their silent flow. It wasn’t like crying, really. No sobs. No gasps for breath, or moans. Just tears that didn’t stop. “I’m soaking your shoulder,” he said, forlornly.

“It’s a hoodie,” Lestrade said, voice smiling. “Not going to be ruined, you know.” His hands began a slow, mannerly exploration of Mycroft’s back and shoulders. Mycroft was surprised to find himself not only accepting—unheard of—but enjoying it with the same purring content as a cat enjoying the worship of human hands. He arched into it and sighed.

The tears didn’t stop. They seemed almost to have nothing to do with him…some possessing ghost’s tears, not his own. Instead he felt still, and adrift on warm currents, floating easily on the swell and fall of a wave. Tears seemed almost an extension of the flow.

He began his own exploration of Lestrade’s body—a body he had pleased, that had pleased him, but that he’d never ventured to trace, to touch, to linger over. This was a different land than the territory he and Lestrade had traversed before; they spoke a different language here. Not the simple, direct language of quick arousal and efficient satisfaction, but something slower, lazier, less focused.

He knew it was eight when the phone in his pocket went off. No doubt it was Anthea, worried he wasn’t in the office yet. He froze, pondering his next move, hovering uncharacteristically between options. Lestrade said nothing.

The phone stopped ringing, but Mycroft remained, transfixed on the horns of the dilemma. He pulled the phone out, then, and held it in view. 

Yes. It had been Anthea.

“Your choice,” Lestrade murmured. “You know what you have to do better than anyone.”

He considered, then nodded. “Give me a minute,” he said, then hit auto-dial, calling her back. She answered in her normal, efficient fashion, already part-way into an overview of the day’s tasks when he cut her off.

“Anthea?”

She stopped, then said, uncertainly, “Are you all right, Mr. Holmes?”

He considered, then said, simply, “Not really. It’s been a worse week than I’d realized. I’m…afraid it caught up with me last night. Can you keep the wolves at bay for me today, my dear? I…need a day off.”

He could hear the statement hit, like a hammer hitting a gong. She pondered. “Give me a moment to think about it,” she said, then. A moment later she said, “Do you care if I tell Lady Smallwood that you’re taking personal time?”

He sighed. “I…” He stopped, then said, warily, “Do you think you can spin this? A bit of guilt from that quarter would actually be a welcome element in our future dealings.”

He could hear the croon of anticipation in Anthea’s voice. “Oh, I can do that.”

She was gloating. He’d have to talk to her about that—it never did to telegraph your glee. But that could wait. “Then by all means spin it as hard as you can. Guilt in bushels, my dear. Lorry-loads.”

“Would you consider taking a week off?”

“Would you keep me in touch? Email reports and phone only if there’s an emergency?”

“Of course, Mr. Holmes.”

“Then a week would be most welcome.”

As no one living could recall a time when Mycroft Holmes had taken off more than a long weekend, it ought to give Anthea all the weapon she needed to suggest Lady Smallwood’s errors were being paid for in Mycroft Holmes’ blood, sweat, and tears.

Tears, certainly.

“Have any other calls coming through to this phone screened,” he added. “Nothing to come through unless it’s critical. Anything else, just put it in your email reports.”

When the call was done he put the phone on the coffee table, then looked shyly at Lestrade. “I don’t have to stay here, you know. I know you’ve got work.”

“You want me to?”

Mycroft frowned. “It’s your decision.”

“Didn’t answer my question. I can go to work, leave you the run of the place, come home when I’m done. You’ve got a week, sunshine. No rush.”

“I…”

“What do you want?”

Mycroft hesitated, hovering in agony as he tried to work his way through to a “right answer” that apparently had nothing to do with logic or efficiency, and everything to do with the tears already threatening to rise up like a flood tide. “Stay,” he finally said.

Lestrade nodded, and made his own call. Then they sat, looking at each other.

“What do you want?” Lestrade asked again. “No. What do you need?”

Mycroft gave a small, helpless grin. “You?”

Lestrade chuffed in amusement. “You’ve already got that, sunshine. Seriously, what do you need?”

Mycroft paid him the respect of giving the question serious thought. At last he said, softly, “I need to break my own rules.”

Lestrade considered, then said, as softly, “I…Look. If we do this…don’t close me out when you’re done? I don’t think I can jerk back and forth on this. My feelings don’t run hot and cold like that.”

“I’ll try?” Mycroft sighed, then, ashamed he couldn’t promise more. “I haven’t tried to do this in years. I don’t know if I can.” He knew sex perfectly well. Intimacy, though, was a land he’d been exiled from since his first lover had died—and he’d never been that familiar with the terrain even before then. “I just… I can’t…” He felt helpless to even express it. “I _need_.” He waited, feeling the first seep of tears again, stinging the outer corners of his eyes.

Lestrade shook his head ruefully and sat up, pulling Mycroft close. “Silly tosser.” He drew them back together, and pulled the blanket high again, letting his hands flow beneath the soft, warm blue fleece.

What followed was unlike any of their previous encounters. It was slow, not fast. Exploratory, not direct and targeted toward one outcome. It was the antithesis of Mycroft’s rules. It was intimate, and all about that intimacy… so much so that Mycroft doubted they’d ever climax. It was pure sensation, pure relationship, entirely alien and entirely overwhelming, a warm current drowning logical thought and overflowing the banks of reason.

It broke Mycroft’s rules—broke them and left them far behind, shards sinking beneath the rising waters of emotion.

They kissed, never needing to come up for air because both understood the art of breathing even as their tongues tangled and stroked. They touched, hands traveling lazily, unconcerned with erogenous zones, happy to caress and move on. Mycroft slipped his hands under Lestrade’s hoodie, gingerly easing the jumper up and over, sliding his hands down Lestrade’s arms as they were bared. Lestrade eased the straps of Mycroft’s braces over his shoulders, then carefully unbuckled his belt, teasing him for wearing both. “Just like you—belt and suspenders.” The words were warm.

They drifted seamlessly from the sofa to the bedroom. Once there, Lestrade braced his back against the headrest, pulling Mycroft to lean back against his chest—another rule broken. He kissed the nape of Mycroft’s neck, hands cupped over the turn of each shoulder.

They drowsed, like that, at ease. When Mycroft woke and felt Lestrade’s erection pressing against his spine, it was an easy thing to turn in his arms, lie belly to belly, bury his face in Lestrade’s neck, and whisper, “Make love to me.” Another rule broke. When, later, Lestrade filled him, and they rolled together in need like a tidal wave, Lestrade leaned over and kissed away the tears that didn’t end until they’d both been wrung dry and fallen in exhaustion.

Mycroft was deep in the ocean of his mind—an ocean grown strange and foreign, no longer cold and dim, but warm and alive.

“You all right?” Lestrade asked him, quietly.

Mycroft considered. “I think perhaps I am,” he replied, and floated away, leaving pain far behind.

 

 

 

 

 

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with sea-weed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Quote from "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"

T. S. Eliot


End file.
